Anthony Slide (ti LI Pt SILII In Historic Photographs Anthony Slide The Vestal Press, Ltd. Vestal, NY 13851-0097 This book is for Rudi , who represented the best in American popular entertainment Also by Anthony Slide Early American Cinema I 19'0) hie Griffith Actresses I 19-3 I The IdoLs of Silence ( 19-6 ) The Big V. A History of the Vitagraph Conenty (1976: revised 198') Early Women Directors (1977: revised 1984 Aspects of American Film History prior to 1920 (1978) Films on Him History (19'9) lbe Kindergarten of the Movies: A History of the Fine Arts Company (1980) lije Vaudevillians (1981) Great Radio Personalities in Historic Photographs (1982 ) A Collector's Guide to Movie ,1Iemorabilia ( 1983 ) Fifty Classic British Films: 19.Q-1982 ( 1985 ) A Collector's Guide to TV Memorabilia (1985) Me American Film Industry: A Historical Dictionary ( 1986) Great Pretenders (1986) Fifty Classic Freud, 1912-1982 (198") Me Cinema and Ireland (1988) With Edward Wagenknecht Me Films qf D.W. Griffith (1975) Fifty Great American Silent Films: 1912-1920 (1980) Frontispiece. Burns and Allen: George Burns (1896— and Gracie Allen (1902-1964). Without question the greatest part- nership in the history of vaudeville, radio and television, Burns and Allen made their radio debut not in America but in England, on the BBC, in June of 1929. They were first heard on CBS with Guy Lombardo in 1932 and soon thereafter The Burns and Allen Show became a radio perennial, making a happy transition to television on October 12, 1950. One of the radio highspots of 1933 was Gracie's search for her supposedly lost brother, which required that she pop up unexpectedly on any CBS program. Copyright C 1982 by Anthony Slide. All rights reserved under Pan American and International Copyright Conventions. Published in Canada by General Publishing Company, Ltd., 3)) Lesmill Road, Don Mills, Toronto, Ontario. Published in the United Kingdom by Constable and Company, Ltd., 10 Orange Street, London WC2H 7EG. Great Radio Personalities in Historic Photographs is a new work, first published by Dover Publications, Inc., in 1982. Manufactured in the United States of America The Vestal Press, Ltd. P.O. Box 97 Vestal, NY 13851-0097 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Slide, Anthony. Great radio personalities in historic photographs. 1. Radio broadcasters—Portraits. I. Title. PN1991.4.A2S54 1988 791.44'092'2 88-5558 ISBN (1-911572-72-4 oa beeClUI "RADIO SWEEPING COUNTRY -1,000,000 sets in use": front-page headline in Variety (March 10, 1922). Like that other great entertainer of mankind, the cinema, The link with vaudeville is a strategic one, for it was radio was not the result of one man's labors, but rather the from vaudeville that the majority of radio's stars came. end product of the pioneering work of various scientists, The "crude and congenitally amateur" radio programs of including James C. Maxwell, Heinrich Hertz, Guglielmo the Twenties that Robert Landry mentions in his 1946 book Marconi, Sir John Fleming and Lee De Forest. The com- This Fascinating Radio Business were replaced by shows mercial development of radio is generally credited to H. starring such major vaudeville figures as Al Jolson, Eddie P. Davis, vice-president of the Westinghouse Electric and Cantor and Ed Wynn. Brilliant young personalities such Manufacturing Company, which opened the first regularly as Rudy Vallee were sounding the death knell for the likes scheduled radio station in the United States, KDKA in East of Harry Horlick and the A & P Gypsies. These new radio Pittsburgh, on November 2, 1920. KDK A was quickly stars turned radio into nothing more than a glorified vau- followed by WBZ in Springfield, Massachusetts, which deville show, just as they and others were to do with tel- opened on September 27, 1921; WJZ, which opened in evision in the late Forties and early Fifties. Supporting these Newark, New Jersey, on October 1, 1921, and KYW, new radio stars were radio's own peculiar creations, the which opened in Chicago on November 11, 1921. Com- countless announcers, so many in number that in 1937 mercial radio came into being on August 28, 1922, when Variety reported that about 150 of them a week moved WEAF in New York broadcast the first sponsored program. from station to station. The marvelous thing about radio American Telephone & Telegraph controlled the long- was that it encouraged vaudevillians to change and perfect distance lines and thus controlled the growth of the radio their acts. The obvious example here is Fred Allen, prob- network. However, in 1926, A. T. & T. sold its radio ably radio's greatest star. It was Allen who succinctly holdings, including WEAF, to the Radio Corporation of summed up the success of the radio comedian as lying America, which already owned a number of stations, in- "in his ability to make the orchestra on his program laugh cluding WJZ, WJY in New York and WRC in Washington, uproariously during the broadcast. Through hearing the D.C. From the Radio Corporation of America came the background of guffawing in the studio the sponsor, lis- National Broadcasting Company, which in 1927 formed tener, and average critic are all convinced that the comedian two networks from the stations owned by A. T. & T. and is a riot despite the fact that they can see nothing funny those owned by R.C. A. These two networks were named about the entire business." the Red and the Blue from the colors of the sheaths cov- Unlike today's network television, commercial radio ering the network wires. That same year, 1927, the Co- provided more than merely comedy and music. It offered lumbia Broadcasting System was formed with a basic net- serious drama and music on a scale unequaled even by work of 16 stations in the Eastern United States. In 1943, today's selection on public television. NBC could proudly NBC was required by the government to sell its Blue boast of its symphony orchestra under the leadership of network, which it did to Edward J. Noble's American Arturo Toscanini. Orson Welles, Burgess Meredith, Nor- Broadcasting Company, and historic station WJZ was re- man Corwin and others were providing unsurpassed dra- named WABC. The Mutual network had come into being matic presentations. Lux Radio Theatre and similar pro- in 1936 with the uniting of four local stations, WOR in grams offered adaptations of screen classics. In 1938, one New York, WGN in Chicago, WLW in Cincinnati and could tune in to the Kate Smith program and listen to WXYZ in Detroit. The Mutual network was acquired in Lillian and Dorothy Gish in a 15-minute adaptation of 1958 by the Hal Roach Studios. Orphans of the Storm, while ten years later radio dramatized Duston's Radio Log and Call Book for 1926 reveals that Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano, which to this day has a typical radio station, WEAF in New York, broadcast an proven too difficult a subject for the cinema to tackle. average of seven hours a day, excluding Sundays. To fill Variety, the entertainment weekly, first reviewed a radio those hours performers were needed. First they came from program on May 10, 1923, a musical show from the Cap- the stage and the concert platform, introduced by anony- itol Theatre in New York, introduced by S. L. Rothafel mous announcers, and it was not until the late Twenties (better known as "Roxy") and broadcast over WEAF. or early Thirties that radio came to develop its own stars. "Radio Reports" first appeared as a regular feature in Va- Interestingly, the evolution of the radio celebrity coincides riety on January 7, 1931 (with reviews of Phil Spitalny and with radio's domination of popular entertainment in His Orchestra, Ted Lewis, Gus Van, the Finkenberg Hour, America, taking over, as it did, a mantle previously worn Pat Rooney and Son, and others), and that is as good a by the motion picture and by vaudeville. time as any from which to date the beginning of the golden age of radio. That golden age ended for radio when it was thanks to the very nature of che ether waves, are enter- superseded as America's most popular form of entertain- taining still the inhabitants of other galaxies out in space. ment by television in the early Fifties. To those privileged to have heard them, Johnny Marvin, This volume offers rare photographs and capsule biog- Nat Brusiloff, Whispering Jack Smith, the Clicquot Club raphies (emphasizing the radio careers) of the great stars Eskimos and Edna Wallace Hopper are still held in affec- of radio's golden age. All the major figures are here, from tionate memory. Not included are the majority of per- the Happiness Boys and Vaughn De Leath to Frank Sinatra formers who starred in the various soap operas and mystery and Jack Webb. Aside from radio's major stars, I have tried series, such as The Romance of Helen Trent, Little Orphan to include a good sampling of those personalities whose Annie, This Is Nora Drake and The Lone Ranger, because time on radio is largely forgotten but who, hopefully, my feeling is that it was not the actresses and actors who Jessica Dragonette on the Cities Service Concert (NBC) in the early Thirties, with Rosario Bourdon's orchestra and announcer Ford Bond Kay Kyser's show (NBC) in session, with Professor Kyser addressing the comedian Ish Kabibble vi Overall view of The Jack Benny Program (NBC) in flit tu /, ties, with Phil Harris leading his orchestra and, in the .fortground, left to right, Benny, Mary Livingstone, Dennis Day, Eddie Anderson and Don Wilson.